28 October 2017 11:37 AM

Saturday PS: In praise of fast

MANY years ago, I came across this wonderful invention called the balancing item

It was, I think, in the trade figures, was quoted separately from the data for imports and exports and, strangely enough, came to the exact sum by which the trade inflows and outflows failed to marry up.

A kindly sort in the City or Whitehall (I forget which) explained that this was no coincidence. The balancing item sounds awfully judicious, and one can imagine it being mulled over by super-brainy statisticians, but it is simply the gap between one lot of figures of figures and the other.

More recently, trade unionists and campaigners for work-life balance (work is part of life, but don’t tell them) have got in on the act. They insist Britain is held hostage by a “long hours culture”. The actual data show a general trend towards shorter hours – it has been a long time since the 39-hour (as opposed to 40-hour) week was a modest but pleasant perk for civil servants and other white-collar types.

Aha, reply the TU types, but this hides a huge increase in “unpaid overtime”. The balancing item, you see.

The “long-hours culture” sits alongside a parallel beef, which is that life in modern Britain has become “too fast”. The most recent substantial contribution to this school of thought came earlier this year with the publication of On Time: Finding Your Pace in a World Addicted to Fast, by Catherine Blyth (HarperCollins).This followed In Praise of Slow by Carl Honore in 2005 (can’t find the publisher) and assorted books more recently telling us all to be more like the Danes, who, apparently, avoid stress by taking it easy (I think that was it).

To be honest, I see little more evidence for the breakneck speed of life than for the long-hours culture. On the contrary, Britain seems increasingly a ponderous, slow-moving country in which everything takes for ever and few seem in much of a hurry about anything.

To take just one example, if I were allowed to give just a single piece of advice to foreign business visitors to these shores, I’d urge them to turn up to appointments a good 15 minutes early. This is to take account of (a) the queues for the one receptionist on duty, (b) the inevitable inability to find your contact “on the system”, (c) the equally inevitable “that line’s engaged/no-one’s answering”, and (d) the time taken to issue them with a security pass and get them to sign in to the building.

Make that 20 minutes.

British life? Fast? Really?

If anything epitomises the snail’s pace of much business and institutional life in this country it is the tortuous performance of Tube and rail systems, in which trains are forever being held at a red signal…awaiting platform clearance…just waiting for the signaller…and all the rest.

Does this have any economic effect? Possibly not. It could be that our absolutely dire productivity performance in recent years has absolutely nothing to do with any of this and that we would still be unproductive even if we were to be constantly on the go, punctual and efficient.

No, I don’t think so either.

Miscellany on Saturday

VERY good article by William Hague in The Daily Telegraph on Tuesday, making the following prediction were any government or group of legislators to try to go back on Brexit:

“[It] would be the most divisive, bitter, angry, hate-filled, and disillusioning process this country could inflict on itself…The levels of abuse and derision, and the loss of faith in Parliament and political leadership, would be amplified well beyond anything we have seen in the modern age. The world would look on with bewilderment while one of the great homes of democracy consumed itself with anger in every direction.”

In fact, I think he’s being a bit optimistic. As far as millions of people are concerned, they left the European Union as of June 24 2016. If told that will not happen, I predict significant parts of the country will unilaterally declare themselves outside the EU. As I’ve said before, the net effect would be to make the no-go areas of Northern Ireland in the Seventies look, by comparison, like children’s dens at the bottom of the garden.

This is how civil wars start.

Speaking of which, my predictions for an early cave-in by Catalonia with regard to its declaration of independence have, so far, been wide of the mark. But I fear I may still be proved right. My rule is: beware of all national movements (Scotland, Wales, Catalonia) that want to stay in the EU. I don't think they've quite got the gist of this independence lark.

Finally, the Thatcherite caucus I mentioned last week (no evidence that it exists, but I bet it does) will, if successful, be able to trace its victory to the result of the 2017 General Election. Had the expected Theresa May landslide have come to be, they'd be nowhere, a dining club whose occasional polite suggestions for reducing the size of the State would be cheerfully ignored by Ministers.

As it is, they have a near-perfect narrative. It is 30 years ago since the Tories won a proper, convincing majority at an election - and guess who was leader? Since then, the party has been told that a move to the centre will yield huge rewards, especially after Tony Blair did so well coming the same way from the opposite direction.

Under three moderate prime ministers since 1987, the results have been (a) narrow majority, followed by defeat, (b) hung Parliament, (c) narrow majority followed by resignation and, (d) hung Parliament.

Going really well, isn't it?

Thanks again for reading and enjoy the weekend.

dan.atkinson@live.co.uk

Europe Didn't Work, by Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson is published by Yale University Press